NASA chief defends personnel flexibility for management plan

House lawmakers on Thursday questioned NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe's request for broad personnel authorities as part of his plan for transforming the troubled space agency. O'Keefe, who took over at NASA in January, assessed the agency's many problems, including its aging workforce, hazy mission and fiscal mismanagement, and decided to use the administration's "Freedom to Manage" initiative as a model. The Bush plan, crafted by O'Keefe while he was deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, seeks to expand a variety of pilot and demonstration projects that have experimented with pay banding, performance bonuses and other changes to the traditional General Schedule pay scale.

"We cannot resolve these new and emerging problems with past solutions, nor are current personnel flexibilities adequate," O'Keefe testified before the House Science Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics. The former management guru told lawmakers the agency needed legislative changes to help NASA compete with the private sector in attracting employees, diversifying the agency's workforce, restructuring the current workforce and steering more students into science and technology. "Without these legislative tools, NASA's challenges will soon become its crisis in human capital management," said O'Keefe. But union officials and some lawmakers say flexibilities requested by O'Keefe are unnecessary and would give the administrator too much authority over personnel issues.

"The proposals contemplated in this legislation have been presented elsewhere as governmentwide changes and have been rejected largely on the grounds that they undermine merit system principles, that they would exacerbate the federal government's so-called human capital crisis and that they would create serious conflicts of interests between private-sector interests and the public good," said Mark Roth, general counsel for the American Federal of Government Employees. "There are opportunities to look at things Congress has already enacted that provide reasonable flexibility."

Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., questioned a proposal that he said encouraged more downsizing at the agency by allowing NASA to offer buyouts to employees and to permanently cut the workforce by the number of people who accept the buyouts. Gordon grilled O'Keefe on his request to allow NASA to create an alternative personnel system that would give the agency authority to change sick leave, overtime and firing procedures. When O'Keefe said he did not envision making changes to those policies, Gordon wondered aloud why he wanted the authority and questioned its inclusion in the proposal. "Should we take that out then, since it's not your intention?" said Gordon, minority chairman of the subcommittee. "You're asking for a lot of authority without providing a lot of information for how the authority will be used. If you're going to say 'trust us,' then give us an idea where this is going to go and what you're going to do." Another lawmaker questioned O'Keefe's vision for the agency, describing it as "eloquent and poetic," but lacking in substance, and criticized his plan for reforming the agency. "Right now you have people cowering in the corners and shaking in their boots wondering what's going to happen to them," said Rep. Shelia Jackson-Lee, D-Texas. "Why should anyone, whether you have bonuses, flexibilities or not…want to come work for NASA, when you don't know what you're doing?" O'Keefe reassured lawmakers that he had no immediate plans to cut NASA's workforce and promised a forthcoming strategic resource review might allay some of their fears. "NASA has a long history, but times have changed, and NASA must change with the times in considering what it does and how it does business," said Comptroller General David Walker, who predicted it would take at least five years to get the agency on better footing. "The steps [O'Keefe] is taking should lay a foundation for change."